[STUDY] The Long Tail of Search: Why The Fastest Path to More Traffic Might Not Be Where You Are Looking

The savvy search marketer understands that it is often significantly easier to move up in the search rankings for multiple keywords whose search volumes, when combined, total that of the one desirable keyword. However, disproportionate focus on these ‘head terms’ is often exacerbated by the executive who wants to be at the top of Google for highly competitive terms.

Over a nine month period we analyzed thousands of keywords in our SEO platform SearchlightTM, to measure the impact of implementing its on-page recommendations on natural search visibility, and to gauge the difference in movement for long-tail vs. head-term search queries.

Our Findings

Rank Movement: Keywords with on-page optimization activities moved, on average, more than one full page in the search results.

Head vs. Long-Tail: Long-tail (low volume) keywords with on-page optimization moved, on average, more than one full page in the search results.

Conversion Rate: Conversion rates for long-tail terms were 2.5x higher for long-tail queries than for head terms.

Nathan is the Director of Research at Conductor and leads Conductor’s research and content team. Nathan is a monthly columnist at Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch. Nathan’s research on digital marketing has been widely covered in both industry publications and mainstream media such as Techcrunch, Venture Beat and the Washington Post. Prior to joining Conductor, Nathan was an analyst at Forrester Research.